Activist athletes are rare in age of the corporate sports champion

This summer marks the 40th anniversary of the famous black power protest at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics.

Two American sprinters, John Carlos and Tommie Smith, raised black-gloved fists on the medal stand during the Star Spangled Banner. They wanted to spotlight poverty and racism just months after the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. and riots in Newark and Detroit.

Can we expect any such protests at the Beijing Olympics this summer? No. The era of the activist athlete is over. We've entered the age of the corporate sports champion, the superstar as a global brand who shies from politics to keep full market share.

Consider the contrast between 1968 and a more recent medal ceremony controversy. At the Barcelona Olympics in 1992, Reebok was the official U.S. Olympic team sponsor, but Michael Jordan and other American basketball stars had big Nike endorsement deals. The players decided to drape American flags over the offending Reebok logo on their team sweats during the gold medal ceremony. Here the dispute no longer concerned the great social questions of the day. It was about the arithmetic of marketing and the endorsement dollar.

And, in fact, Jordan became the prototype for the new corporate athlete. When asked to endorse the Democratic candidate in hard-fought Senate race in his home state of North Carolina, the basketball god declined. "Republicans," he explained, "buy sneakers too."

The new alpha superstar, Tiger Woods, follows the same principle. Like most leading athletes today, he lends support only to the most uncontroversial causes, children and cancer being the favorites. The war in Iraq? Global warming? Woods -- and most sports stars -- won't touch these touchy topics with his 45-inch driver.

We're a long way from the days when tennis star Billie Jean King championed women's rights or Muhammad Ali, an Olympic gold medalist, was sentenced to five years in prison for refusing to fight in Vietnam. "I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong," Ali said, "They never called me n-----."

There's certainly plenty to protest in Beijing. As extraordinary as China's booming economy may be, the country remains a Communist dictatorship. Speaking out about human rights or Tibet can get you thrown in jail. Steven Spielberg recently withdrew as artistic advisor for the opening and closing ceremonies. He had been urged to do so by activists who charge that China, the Sudan's largest investor, is not doing enough to stop the murderous pillage of Darfur.

By contrast, LeBron James, the latest Nike icon and an Olympic basketball team member, declined to sign a letter about the killing in Darfur drafted by his Cleveland Cavaliers teammates. And, as part of the new firewall between sports and politics, the British Olympic Committee tried to make its athletes pledge not to "comment on any politically sensitive issues."

The games have morphed into a multibillion dollar business with heavyweight corporate sponsors and gigantic television contracts, and China envisions the Beijing Olympics as its cheery coming-out party as the newest superpower. None of these stakeholders want any raised fists to spoil what has become the highest-rated reality show of them all.

Is it bad that athletes have fallen so mute about politics? Maybe we shouldn't expect anything more from our sports icons than the beauty of their performance. It's not as if an ability to run fast or jump high makes you an expert on world affairs. I can't say I much care what the pole vault gold medalist thinks about the Kyoto Treaty or the fall presidential elections.

But I do miss the unruly passion of that earlier time. You could agree -- or not -- with John Carlos and Tommie Smith. The U.S. Olympic Committee banished them from the team and apologized for their "discourtesy." But the two men risked their careers for what they believed, and a cause larger than the fantasy world of sports.

It would be nice to see more sports stars try to wield their immense influence in positive ways. Now it's too often just about winning and getting your face on a Wheaties box.

Following Spielberg's announcement, a spokesperson for adidas brushed aside calls that her company also withdraw in protest over China's role in Darfur. The apparel giant has reportedly paid $200 million for Beijing sponsorship rights.

This makes me wonder: Will anyone ask LeBron James or any of Nike's other Olympic stars to wear anything with an adidas logo?

That might be the only thing that would get any fists in the air.

Orin Starn, a professor of cultural anthropology at Duke University, is completing a book titled, "How Golf Explains America: An Anthropologist Reports on the World's Most Politically Incorrect Sport."